Potenza nuda? : sovereignty, biopolitics, capitalism

Marx defines labour-power as "the aggregate of all those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being." And in this sense, labour-power is the common name of all potentials"”the key that joins the ontological question of potential/act to an analysis of the capitalist relations of production. By conducting his philosophical investigations between these poles, Virno pushes beyond Agamben's Aristotelian view of potential as 'preferring not to'"”a disposition that, as Negri point outs, sounds like nothing so much as a declination to act politically. But he also moves beyond Negri's Spinozan optimism"”the utopian bent that casts constituent power as an undisputed origin. In the double game of potential/act, Virno thus discovers theoretical resources for understanding how the permanent state of exception named by Agamben provides the juridical coordinates for the 'personal subordination' that accompanies the subjectivization and making-precarious of labour in post-fordist capitalism. The drawing of such connections could hardly be more important than at the present time, when the ongoing processes of capitalist globalization encounter the emergency of global civil war.